Election for academic council

Dear Colleague.

You may remember an email a few months ago in which I wrote that the election to the academic council of the TECH faculty was postponed until the final department structure had fallen into place. The structure is now complete, and elections will be called soon. Bent Tolstrup Christensen, Section of Soil Biology and Nutrients, Foulum (Bent Tolstrup Christensen - Research - Aarhus University au.dk) and I (Inge S. Fomsgaard, Section Plant Health, Flakkebjerg) Inge S. Fomsgaard - Research - Aarhus University (au.dk) have put on a list together in the previous 6 years, I as the first candidate and Bent as a deputy, but now we want to pass on the baton. We have been elected by peaceful election every year because there have been no other lists than ours. The principle for dividing the work among the two on the list is that the deputy is summoned to the council if the first candidate withdraws from the council, or is away/on long-term sick leave.

What do you do when you are a VIP representative on the academic council? One must advise the dean on a number of matters. You can read more about this via this link Academic Council to Natural Sciences and Technical Sciences (au.dk).

Examples of topics that have been up in recent times: Prepare consultation responses to the Ministry in connection with a new job structure; make the dean aware of the special circumstances surrounding the promotions/permanent appointments of researchers, who are primarily engaged in government preparedness; provide input to AU's policy for promoting diversity/equality in staff.

We encourage the colleague or colleagues who may be interested in this work to stand for election to the academic council, and possibly circulate some thoughts on how they intend to prioritise the work.

We point out that the working language in the Academic Council has so far been 100% Danish. The Secretariat of the Academic Council has stated that if candidates who do not speak Danish are elected, the discussions will, to the extent possible, take place in English. But there will be topics, e.g. commenting on documents from the ministries, etc., which will take place in Danish.

Regards Bent and Inge